COLOUR IN MY GARDEN 



to gypsy roving, to preach the cult of beauty from the high- 

 way to all who care to listen; but in the garden they appear 

 like shy country folk at a city rout, their native beauty and 

 grace unfelt because of their manifest unfitness for the 

 occasion. Not all wild flowers seem to me appropriate for 

 garden decoration. I cannot bear to see the Cardinal 

 Flower in captivity and feel that all its wild soul must be 

 reaching out and yearning for the seclusion of the shaded 

 stream-sides, and the freedom of the wild world. No one, I 

 believe, has yet been able to tame the free spirit of the 

 Fringed Gentian and it is better so that we may yet have 

 something to draw our footsteps from out the narrow 

 windings of the garden paths to windy uplands and broad 

 sun-tanned marsh-meadows, away from the prescribed and 

 personal to the contemplation of infinity. 



Blue is represented in the autumn garden by Aconitum 

 autumnale and A. Wilsoni, the fine Chimney Bellflower 

 (Campanula pyramidalis), .Salvia azurea and S. uliginosa 

 still lingering and the charming little Leadwort (Plumbago 

 Larpentae) of so warm and rich a blue. This lovely jewel of 

 the waning year is not reliably hardy in all soils. It likes not 

 the flesh pots of the garden, but thrives best in well-drained 

 gravelly loam. In spring it makes so tardy an appearance 

 above ground that we are apt to abandon hope of ever seeing 

 it again and often injure or quite annihilate the little plants in 

 the spring digging and cultivating. All these blue flowers are 

 fine and rich in association with those soft colour tones held 

 up to scorn as rosy magenta, the pinkish Hardy Asters, Iron- 

 weed, and the beautiful Desmodium penduliflorum. 



The autumn perennials last long in beauty. They do not 



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